How many highway lanes could be paved, how many bridges repaired, how many illnesses averted, how many opiate addicts saved from overdoses, how many veterans given better care with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Trump administration is spending on discretionary military operations in impoverished Yemen?The United States is allied with Saudi Arabia as it prosecutes a brutal military campaign there. “The U.S. role in the war is substantial,” Michael Brendan Dougherty explains. “Saudi Arabia buys most of its weapons from the U.S. Its pilots are trained by the United States. And the United States refuels Saudi planes in the air. The U.S. military is widely believed to be helping the Saudis choose targets. And U.S. special [operations] forces are on the ground in Yemen, ostensibly to fight local al Qaeda outfits.”

He adds:

But just as in Syria, the U.S. finds itself committed to the downfall of a Shia government, while at the same time working to degrade the ability of al Qaeda to benefit from the fall of that same government. The Saudi coalition routinely bomb civilian targets like hospitals or food production facilities. In turn, the Houthis have resorted to extreme tactics as well.

It’s just the sort of messy intervention that an establishment hawk like Hillary Clinton would’ve hubristically prosecuted and that populists are understandably tired of financing. (Some hawks regard it as a proxy war against Iran, a view many dispute.)